Mezzotint - Progress or otherwise

 Work is going steadily away on the latest mezzotint with one small set back. I took my first impression from the plate back at the end of January. 

State 1 - Impression 1. Printed 22/01/23.

Overall the image is still dark with a long way to go yet but the main elements are defined and starting to take shape.

State 2 - Impression 1. Printed 04/02/23.

After more scraping the large foreground tree is more clearly defined but the sky areas between the tracery of branches still needs more scraping and burnishing. Fiddly work and time consuming but strangely meditative.

State 3 - Impression 1. Printed 12/02/23.

Overall more or less as I want it. There is still a lot of burnishing to do in the sky area and parts of the smaller twigs on the foreground tree need to be lightened. However, I'm not happy about the wall on the right hand side. I wanted a more dappled light effect on it but I've scraped too much, not left enough dark areas and now it just looks flat. After some thought I decided the only option was to re-rock that part of the plate and start again on the wall. A bit of a setback as I was hoping to have at least a decent artists proof printed ready to take to the North Wales Print Fair at the Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno next week.